The Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort will, for the first time, link administrative health and education data to longitudinal environmental exposures for children at national level in England. It will serve as a data resource to support research about the health and well-being of children via improved home and school environments.

The cohort will become a large data resource which will allow researchers to explore how children are affected by changes in environmental exposures over time, including children belonging to high-risk groups. The cohort will allow for cutting-edge research in environmental and social epidemiology, for example projects exploring long-term pandemic impacts or the effects of local climate change and Net Zero policies on children’s health and education.

The Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort will link birth and mortality records, health and educational attainment datasets, to maternal health (up to 12 months prior to their child’s birth), and environmental data for all children born in England from 2006 – approximately 11 million children at first build. A subset of children born between 2010 and 2012, and between 2020 and 2022 will be linked to their mothers’ 2011 or 2021 Census records, respectively. The cohort database will be held in, and accessed via, a trusted research environment (TRE) at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). All geographical identifiers in the cohort, allowing for linkage to further environmental data, will be securely held by the ONS, separately to the main cohort, and will be encrypted before being shared with researchers.

By linking children’s data to their mothers’ medical records, researchers will be able to explore the pathways between exposures and events during pregnancy and the health and education of children later on, for example associations between exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and subsequent child health. It will also be possible to link children to their siblings, allowing for sibling-control studies which have the potential to reduce bias when analysing cohort data by controlling for family-level risk factors.

The cohort will link the following datasets:

• ONS birth and death registration data (Phase 1 delivery, early 2026)
• Census 2011 and 2021 data: data on children born within two years of each Census (Phase 1, 2026)
• NHS birth notification data (Phase 2)
• Hospital Episode Statistics: data on hospital contacts (Phase 2)
• Maternity Services Dataset: data on maternal health during pregnancy (Phase 2)
• Mental Health Services Dataset: information on referrals to mental health services (Phase 2)
• Community Dispensing Data: information on dispensed medicines, including for asthma (Phase 2)
• National Pupil Database: data on all children in state school, including special educational needs provision and exam results (Phase 2)
• Getting Information About Schools Data (school data) (Phase 2)

In addition to the linked administrative data, a number of open environmental datasets will also be mapped to the Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort at set up, including:

• Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs modelled Annual Air Pollution data (Phase 1, 2026)
• Ordinance Survey Open Greenspace database (Phase 1, 2026)
• Met Office data on air temperature (Phase 1, 2026)
• Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Energy Performance Certificate data (Phase 1, 2026)
• Valuation Office Agency data on property type and valuation (Phase 1, 2026)
• Ordinance Survey Distance to Roads and Traffic Flow data (Phase 2)

This will allow research on the impacts of air pollution, building characteristics, local neighbourhood, and road distance on child outcomes.